Part literary mystery, part satirical take on the American campus novel, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut’s a blistering exploration of what it means to be an Asian American woman in contemporary American society, represented through her central character Ingrid Yang. Ingrid Yang’s a variation on the classic “innocent abroad”, born to Taiwanese parents she’s spent most of her life attempting to pass as white, she only dates white men, and she avoids the company of the more politically-vocal Asian American student body. Through happenstance, and the blatant manipulations of her almost-exclusively white tutors, she’s ended up in the Asian American Studies Department in Barnes University. Now in her eighth year of post-grad study, she’s stalled on her thesis. Her subject’s the work of Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou, aka the “Chinese Robert Frost”. Xiao-Wen Chou has become a canonical figure, the voice of Chinese American experience: extracts from his poems feature on posters and the kind of inspirational images routinely found framed in restaurants and dentists’ waiting rooms. He’s been so exhaustively researched Ingrid’s struggling to find anything to add to this vast body of existing material. Then a chance discovery sets her, and close friend Eunice, on a quest to uncover a mystery that will change everything, reaching into every corner of Ingrid’s existence.

What starts out fairly conventionally shifts gears into full-on satire after a major plot twist – one that will lead to scenes of absurdist proportions. What Ingrid uncovers takes her deep into a web of literary fraud and academic conspiracy. But, more importantly, it also forces her to confront the issues she’s been dodging: from racial stereotyping to tokenism and quota filling. Chou’s narrative’s a wonderfully wry, incisive take on the intricacies of racism towards Asian Americans from cultural appropriation to full-on violence. Chou also constructs a deeply-convincing, well-researched, portrait of the devastating impact of white male fetishization of East Asian women throughout recent history, a theme which harks back to her searing, viral essay “What White Men Say in Our Absence”, and here goes hand in hand with exposing the hypocrisy that can lurk behind a veneer of support from white people. I found Chou’s work accessible and fluid, deceptively so at times, the territory she covers, and the questions she raises, are important and timely. There are, admittedly, moments when her narrative threatens to go off the rails but even then, I still found it lucid and compelling.

Whilst the plot and the social commentary were to my liking, the characters and the writing style definitely fell short; "Disorientation" is, however, one of the most accurate depictions of academia.

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou is a novel set in the world of academia, dealing with themes of race and identity.

Disorientation is a complicated book, in general but also for me personally. Let's start with the general stuff first. The book follows Ingrid Yang as she navigates the last year of her PhD—a difficult ordeal in and of itself—while also being an Asian American in a very white, very patronising academic setting.

"[...] never certain if the submissive and docile figure in the mirror was a reflection of her true self, or the ghostly affect of someone telling her, her entire life: this is who you are, this is all you can ever be. [...] How was it possible to be so desired and so hated, the two intertwined like heads of the same beast?"

The unique thing about Ingrid as a narrator is that she starts off as a very "neutral" character where social justice and politics are concerned. She is uncomfortable when the whiteness of her surroundings are pointed out to her and you get the feeling she is genuinely just three breakdowns away from calling someone a feminazi. I can't comment on how realistic a character she is, as someone who isn't AsAm, but it was an interesting headspace to be in.

Other prominent characters in the book include Stephen, her (white<3) fiancé who hits big with his translation of a Japanese work, despite not being able to speak Japanese himself; Eunice, Ingrid's close friend and confidante who...I don't even know how to describe her role in the book actually, like she's there to support Ingrid but also acts as a means to show Ingrid's fucked up relationship with her Asian-ness; Michael, Ingrid's PhD advisor who is the worst case scenario of "white scholar studying Asian literature" brought to life; Vivian, a Post-Colonial Studies major who often speaks the way stan twt "social justice advocates" do; and Alex, who I'm guessing is just there to show us that Asian men can not only be incels but also grow out of it!

Look, the plot is rather convoluted and it requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief on your part. The characters can come off rather one-dimensional and reductive and the overall message of the book is confusing. It's been 3 days since I finished this book and I still don't know what exactly the author is trying to say about sociopolitical consciousness in the modern day and age.

This book comes with a lot of faults and I wouldn't exactly say they're easy to ignore. But god, when this book hits, it hits.

"And she loved these girls back, these strawberry and dirty blond girls with hair on their arms that shone golden in the sun [...] She thought they were perfect, and for someone like them to love her, even half the time, had to mean something about the kind of person she was."

Like jjsbjsdgjsdgnj the thing that kept me going, despite raising my eyebrows at multiple points, was the honesty with which certain themes were explored. Ingrid coming to terms with how her Asian roots have ultimately shaped the way she interacts with the world, for better or for worse. The real, if sometimes over-the-top, portrayal of how twisted academic discussions of social issues can get—Guys, why are we fighting? The topic we started with was so straightforward? What the fuck does this have to do with your thesis?

I don't think I'd ever read this in full again, and I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to people willy-nilly. But I think I would come back and skim through it just to read over some of my favorite, not-so-quotable parts, and I've already recced it to a friend who I think could do with the same catharsis I got from this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an ARC!

I really enjoyed this book and the whole way through I found it very easy to see why the book was titled disorientation. It is very well written with a compelling storyline, witty narrative and well developed characters some of whom are more likeable than others. I really liked it.

Disorientation is a satirical campus novel that explores the academic world of authenticity, race, and power, as a student uncovers a secret about a canonical poet. Ingrid Yang is close to the end of her PhD on the Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou, but she's finding it hard to be inspired to write anything, especially as she doesn't really care about her topic. A discovery in the poet's archive leads her down the path of a mystery that might give her something interesting to write about, but it goes deeper than that, and Ingrid is forced, with the help of her best friend Eunice, to confront herself, her white boyfriend, and people across campus, as the place becomes a battleground for Ingrid's discovery.

This is a classic biting campus novel that takes a fresh perspective, looking not only at who gets to call authenticity in literature and academia, but at one woman's grappling with her own relationship to her identity and relationships to others. Ingrid is thrown from her safe existence with her mundane boyfriend to a life filled with harder morality and questions, and the book takes the reader through her journey in a satisfying way, with more of a character-focus than some satirical books can have. A lot of big topics are covered, most notably race, tokenism, and fetishisation of cultures, but also ideas of what free speech in universities means and even kinds of radicalisation, in both alt-right and incel communities. The conceit of the book might be satirical, but a lot of what is shows is very real.

I found this a funny and sharp novel, written in an engaging way, that shows the complexity and, yes, the disorientating experience of a character learning more about white institutions and what they uphold and protect, whilst she also tries to navigate what this means for her own work and love life.